TITLE:
Recent Climate Changes in Hailuogou Watershed on the Eastern Slope of Mount Gongga, South-Eastern Fringe of the Tibetan Plateau, China
AUTHORS:
Yuchuan Meng, Guodong Liu, Mingxi Li
KEYWORDS:
Temperature, Precipitation, Hailuogou Watershed, Variation, Trend
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.3 No.2,
April
1,
2015
ABSTRACT: Mountainous regions are
particularly sensitive to climate change. Seasonal and annual variations in
climate already strongly influence the ecosystems in such areas. Temporal and
spatial variations of temperature and precipitation, for higher elevation site
(Hailuogou Station) and lower elevation site (Moxi Station) within Hailuogou
watershed which is located on the eastern slope of Mount Gongga, China, were
analyzed to evaluate the extent and trend of climate change. Climate data were
carefully checked and corrected for errors before being analyzed. The results
of this work indicate that the measured climate data contain a wide magnitude
of variations in temperature and precipitation in the mountainous region. The
annual, minimal and maximal temperatures exhibit some increasing trends during
the studied period. The results of this work show that slightly warming climate
is mostly caused by increasing minimum temperature. Maximal precipitation
mostly occurs in July and minimal precipitation mostly occurs in December.
There exists a slightly declining trend of precipitation during 1988-2009.
Precipitation exhibits an increasing trend with altitude, whereas the temperature
has the reverse trend in the alpine area during studied period.